Rebecca Bratspies,
New York City.
11 August 2013

In my first blog post for The Nature of Cities, I wrote about environmental justice as a bridge between traditional environmentalism and an increasingly urban global population. I suggested that we had work to do to makes environmental concerns salient to a new, ever-more urban generation. Since then, I have been working to test this hypothesis. To that end, I developed an environmental justice education project being implemented in New York City schools. This project is built around Mayah’s Lot, the environmental justice comic book I co-wrote with artist Charlie LaGreca for the CUNY Center for Urban Environmental Reform (CUER). Funding for the project came from the CUNY Law School Innovation Fund. You can read the book here, and listen to an audio version with pictures here.

(Full-disclosure, I am the founding director of CUER, and the Center’s mission in many ways mirrors my own—connecting scholarly research with social change advocacy, particularly around issues of environmental democracy and community empowerment.)

Why environmental justice?

The roots of the Mayah’s Lot educational experiment go back more than a decade. In 2004, Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus sent shockwaves through environmental communities with their provocatively-titled essay “The Death of Environmentalism.”

Claiming that environmentalists in the United States were like generals fighting the last war, the authors urged that tackling climate change requires a rethinking of the most basic assumptions about the nature of environmental problems, and the solutions needed to overcome those problems. In particular, the authors urged that environmentalists abandon what they call an overly narrow conception of environmental issues, and instead make common cause with unions, industry and others to frame environmentally beneficial social change in terms of economic growth and prosperity. While I agreed with some of these points, I parted company with the authors’ narrow focus on co-opting the rhetoric of economic prosperity. Instead, I became convinced that environmental sustainability had to put social justice squarely at the center of its mission.

The IPCC’s climate modeling of carbon dioxide emissions.

Nearly a decade into this Death of Environmentalism debate, what we are seeing may actually be the death of the environment itself. Atmospheric CO2 concentrations hover at the 400ppm threshold, human population is headed toward 11 billion, 2012 Arctic sea ice hit its lowest extent ever, and we are losing species up to 10,000 times faster than background extinction rates. The Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change’s worst-case scenario, laid out in 2007, looks increasingly over-optimistic. Yet, the same debate is still raging over the same set of environmental versus economic tactics: even as the world drastically changes for the worse.

It is to one small subset of this ongoing debate that my work in New York City schools is directed. Too often, New Yorkers bracket environmental issues as happening “elsewhere,” or minimize those issues as the province of “liberal white people.” Yet, many of the ills that plague New York’s poor neighborhoods, especially its communities of color, are directly related to toxic waste dumps, excessive truck traffic, bus depots, waste transfer stations and other “locally undesirable land-uses” (often called LULUs, hence Lulu is the villain in Mayah’s Lot).

I am convinced that environmental justice is the way out of this conundrum, and I am convinced that youth education is the place to start. In an era of climate change, environmental concerns are the core of social justice. It is no accident that Mayah’s Lot begins with Mayah, saying:

“Environmental Justice, I bet you don’t even know what that means…I had no idea that it actually affects every one of us. That is, until it came to my home.”

Why a comic book?

Once scorned as representing “an all-time low” in education, comic books have recently come into their own as educational tools. Rechristened “graphic novels,” many comic books now grapple with weighty social issues on a regular basis. In 2011, the United States Center for Disease Control released Preparation 101: Zombie Pandemic—a graphic novel targeting emergency preparedness. That same year, MIT Professor Jonathan Gruber published a political primer in comic book form entitled Health Care Reform: What It is, Why It’s Necessary, How it Works. Educators are increasingly realizing that comic books have an untapped potential. Their bright colors and simple story lines make them accessible, and few people are intimidated by being asked to read a comic book. That makes these books an attractive tool for reaching non-traditional audiences, reluctant readers, and young readers. Organizations like Comicbook Classroom are using comics to great effect with these populations.

Graphic artist Charlie LaGreca. Photo: Rebecca Bratspies

It certainly helps that artist Charlie LaGreca created a visually-stunning book. Mayah’s Lot stands alone as a storybook, but it also provides valuable environmental justice lessons. It is an ideal tool for bringing environmental messages to a generation steeped in highly visual and interactive ways of learning. Students learn alongside Mayah, the young heroine, as she organizes her already environmentally over-burdened neighborhood to prevent the siting of a hazardous waste facility on a nearby vacant lot. To succeed, she must navigate administrative law hurdles, produce compelling advocacy grounded in fact-based reasoning (a big component of the new Common Core Learning Standards), and mobilize popular support.

The resulting story offers an environmental justice message that has won praise from state environmental protection agencies around the country (Mississippi and Illinois will be adopting the book in their community outreach efforts), has been featured in Colorlines and mentioned on NY Times Parenting blog. Better still, it resonates with children like my very urban daughter and her friends—many of whom tend to think of “the environment” as existing elsewhere, rather than where they live and learn.

Why public schools?

With funding from the Greening Western Queens Fund, CUER piloted use of Mayah’s Lot in six-week educational workshops with 200 fifth and sixth graders at two Queens schools (Public School (PS) 85Q and PS122Q). Far too many public schools in places like New York City are struggling—underfunded and overcrowded. Even the most dedicated teachers are hard-pressed to meet ever-changing curricular expectations. Projects like Mayah’s Lot can help teachers and students think about learning in new ways, and by integrating science, art and civics with students’ lived experience bringing a new excitement to the classroom (having an amazingly talented artist fresh from organizing the Denver Comic Con come into the classroom and draw with the students doesn’t hurt either).

Denver Comic Con founder Charlie LaGreca, center. Photo: Denver Post

And the results are dramatic. In pre-tests taken before the program began, few students knew whether agencies were part of the executive, legislative or judicial branches of government. They were fuzzy on how laws are made, and had no idea about implementation. None could name three agencies or define environmental justice. By the program’s end, students could comfortably identify multiple agencies, fit those agencies into a scheme of governmental separation of powers, and virtually all knew that fair treatment and meaningful participation were key components of environmental justice.

The comic book challenged students to translate their grade-school civic lessons into a real-world appreciation for how to use law to achieve environmental justice. The environmental justice curriculum built around Mayah’s Lot, helped these students cultivate not only an understanding of how public policy decisions are made, but also a keen appreciation for the points at which citizens can fruitfully intervene in that process. It taught them to use citizen science to generate data, and to make their interventions as persuasive as possible. Students began identifying environmental problems in their neighborhoods.

With help from artist Charlie LaGreca, each class of students created its own environmental villains. Here are a few of the more notable ones: Evil Jimmy (who sprayed polluted water from his hoses); the Bear King (who killed animals indiscriminately and destroyed their habitat) and the Litterer (whose villainy is self-explanatory).

Many students used these villains to create their own environmental justice comic books, addressing environmental issues in their communities. And, because every good comic book has a hero, here is one of the student-created environmental justice heroes for good measure: Super Rex the Recycler.

Super Rex the Recycler: environmental hero. Photo: Rebecca Bratspies

The most encouraging part has been the reaction from the students. One note left by a 10-year old on EPA’s Environmental Justice in Action Blog (which featured Mayah’s Lot on June 27, 2013), really says it all.

Hello, my name is Itzá and I live in El Paso, Texas and I am 10 years old. I think they should continue to teach about environmental justice. It interested me that a united group of citizens stopped others who wanted to dump toxic things that would damage the neighborhood. I was impressed by the courage of the activists who defended their community. Thanks for the post. (I’m using my dad’s email).”

Rebecca Bratspies is a Professor of Law at the CUNY School of Law where she is the founding director of the CUNY Center for Urban Environmental Reform. She has published widely on regulating under conditions of uncertainty. Her recent scholarship focuses on questions of sustainability and on the intersection of human rights and environmental regulation.

Rebecca Bratspies

Director, Center for Urban Environmental Reform
Professor of Law
City University of New York,
New York, NY USA
Rebecca Bratspies is a Professor of Law at the CUNY School of Law where she is the founding director of the CUNY Center for Urban Environmental Reform. She has published widely on regulating under conditions of uncertainty—with a focus on GMOs and corporate responsibility. Her recent scholarship focuses on questions of sustainability, and on the intersection of human rights and environmental regulation. She is a scholar with the Center for Progressive Reform, an appointed member of the ABA Standing Committee on Environmental Law, and a member of the Executive Committee of the American Association of Law Schools Section on the Environment.

Before entering academia, Professor Bratspies served as a judicial law clerk to the Honorable C. Arlen Beam of the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals. As a Henry Luce Foundation Scholar, Professor Bratspies spent a year seconded to the Republic of China (Taiwan) Environmental Protection Administration. She has taught at the University of Idaho, Michigan State University and NYU. She holds a BA in Biology from Wesleyan University and a J.D. cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania.

Post navigation

5 thoughts on “A Comic Book Sparks Kids Toward Environmental Justice”

Love the comic book. What are you plans for the associated curriculum? Seems like this would work great with new NGSS.

We created a comic anthology for NYC Schools too! We use ants as a theme to teach students about ecosystems, invasive species, human-impacts, and other ecology topics! http://ants.yourwildlife.org/myrmex-comic/

“[A city where] everything comes together . . . subjectivity and objectivity, the abstract and the concrete, the real and the imagined, the knowable and the unimaginable, the repetitive and the differential, structure and agency, mind and body, consciousness and the unconscious, the disciplined and the trans-disciplinary, everyday life and...

I have lived in an array of fascinating cities, and visited a host of others. I have loved many (New York, Hong Kong, Harare and Berlin); been miserable in a few (London and Pretoria); oddly disappointed by some (San Francisco, Dublin and Sydney) overwhelmed by others (Shanghai and Cairo); and...

It was close to midnight. A youngish, jovial-looking white woman with russet colored hair ran by me with ostensive ease. She donned earphones and dark, body-fitting jogging attire. I was walking home from the A train stop and along Lewis Avenue, which is a moderately busy thoroughfare that runs through...

In the United States of America cities have long been gateways to opportunity. For centuries, people from all over the country and the world, including my own grandparents, came to our cities chasing the promise of a better life. America’s bargain with its citizens, rich and poor was, in many...

MORE ESSAYS IN...

SCIENCE &
TOOLS

In October 2012, Hurricane Sandy slammed into the New York and New Jersey shoreline, with winds of 145 kilometers per hour and a storm surge 4.3 meters above mean low water. The superstorm flooded the city’s subways, destroyed thousands of...

PEOPLE &
COMMUNITITES

In the Third Millennium, we live in a globalized urban world, where loss of local culture and deep social segregation are happening. Climate is changing faster than predicted, hitting cities and people hard: climate-related floods, landslides, droughts, heat waves, traffic disruption, and food shortage are increasing. For instance, in Brazil, four years of drought affected millions of urban residents in...

ART &
AWARENESS

A friend once told me about the time he started finding dry dog food pellets mysteriously appearing in his pockets every time he put on a freshly laundered and dried pair of pants. Dr. Will Turner had a dog, of course,...

Subscribe

Our Partners and Funders

Login

Donate to TNOC

Please consider supporting us with a one-time or recurring gift. Any amount is appreciated. TNOC is a 501(c)3 in the United States, and your gift is tax deductible under the laws of U.S. and in some other countries.